Chapter 11
The hallway smelled of garlic and cold olive oil from dinner, the lingering ghost of a meal eaten before everything had exploded again.
Frederica stood with her back against the cool plaster, telling herself she had come out here for water.
Really, she just needed to step away because watching Dario be upset was something she didn't know how to handle.
Seeing his composure come apart at the seams while Serapis dismantled everything he thought he knew about his father's death wasn't something she could witness and feel nothing.
Frederica could hear her father's voice, low and even, asking something. Serapis answering. Then Dario, after a long silence, said something she couldn't quite make out.
Good. He is still talking. People who talked were generally not about to do something stupid like shoot a sorcerer who probably couldn't be killed.
Despina emerged from the kitchen, two glasses of water in hand. She saw Frederica's face and offered her one. "He's steadier than he looks."
"I know," Frederica replied, without really believing it.
Dario was good at looking steady than he was at being it, and those weren't the same thing.
Despina nodded toward the sitting room door. "Go back in."
"I was giving him a moment."
"You were running away," her mother replied pleasantly. "They're the same movement, only one of them admits what it is. Now, go back in."
"I don't know if we should be witnessing this. It's their family. Their mess," Frederica argued.
"You are really going to walk away when your friends are in danger from some ancient psychopath trying to become a god?
" Despina's eyes narrowed. "And before you bite my head off that Dario isn't your friend, I'm also thinking of Kon and Altun.
They are friends. This Agrippa man will be coming for them, too, and you know it. "
Frederica ran a hand over her face. "It's just hard… seeing him upset. He's always seemed to have it under control when our paths have crossed. He only lost his cool once when he thought Rodrigo was dead. He's…"
"I know," Despina said and reached up to smooth down Frederica's flyaways. "Giving a shit about someone sucks at times. Come on, he'll need that water."
Frederica gave in and followed her back into the sitting room. The files were still spread across the table, the two columns side by side, evidence of a mystery that now seemed small against everything else.
Dario no longer looked like he was about to throw up, which was probably a good thing. He was staring at the middle distance, like he had been given information too large to hold all at once and was mentally trying to find places to put it.
She set the glass of water on the table in front of him, pulled her chair out, and sat down. He didn't look at her. That was all right. She didn't need him to.
"Ask," Dario said finally.
Serapis tilted his head. "Which question?"
"You came to me because you want something you think I'll give you that they won't. So, ask me, Zio."
"Rodrigo is a stone wall," Serapis replied, relenting at last. "He responds to everything from a position of strength, and a man who only negotiates from strength can't hear a conversation.
He would have had a knife at my throat within thirty seconds of opening the door.
I might have respected that once, but not anymore. "
Dario's mouth pulled at the corner, but it wasn't anything like a smile. "What about Leo?"
"Leo would have tried to kill me. He wouldn't have succeeded, but the attempt would have damaged the relationship before we had built one, and I need that relationship." Serapis paused, turning something over. "Leo doesn't have your father's heart."
"His heart. Do enlighten me," Dario deadpanned.
"Leo looks like Niccolò," Serapis replied. "He has his face, his coloring, his relationship with magic. He has a mind like a blade. I would trust Leo with a problem that needed to be solved with precision, because he would solve it without sentiment or error."
He stopped. "Leo has Gabriella's soul, though. The ruthlessness. The capacity to cut ties and move forward without looking back. Your mother told him that herself, didn't she? That he looked like Niccolò but had her soul?"
Frederica had no idea what Dario's expression was because she kept her gaze purposely ahead, but she saw his hands.
He had both of them flat on the table, one on either side of the water glass he hadn't touched.
His right hand made a small movement, barely perceptible—his fingers curling slightly against the wood, then releasing.
He clearly had heard that story. She could tell from the way he didn't react that it was something he had already known and never examined.
"You," Serapis continued, quieter now, "are the one who has Niccolò's heart.
The one who slows down before he acts. The one capable of holding two contradictory truths at the same time and finding the path between them.
Your father could walk into a room full of enemies and find the thing they all needed in order to become something other than enemies.
That isn't a lesser inheritance, nipote. That's the harder one."
Dario didn't say anything, but his hands had curled into fists. Frederica kicked his foot under the table, warning him not to show that Serapis was getting to him, and he released his hands.
Serapis went on, not noticing the exchange.
"Your charm isn't the mask, Dario. Your father had the same gift.
The mask is what Gabriella made it into.
She took Niccolò's ability to bring people together and turned it into a weapon, and then she handed it to you and called it your one useful function. "
Frederica glanced sideways at Dario. The Charmer was gone. Not shattered but absent, the way a coat is absent when you set it down. What was underneath was not what she had expected.
She had assumed, in the armored way she made most of her assumptions, that underneath Dario's effortless grin and the relentless banter, there would be something hard. Something manipulative that knew what it was doing and had made peace with it.
There was no peace on Dario's face. There was something much younger, rawer, and more real. He had spent his entire adult life believing he was the least significant version of something important and was only now being told he had been looking at it from the wrong angle.
Frederica didn't know why that made her chest ache. She kept her face neutral and said nothing, because this wasn't the moment to speak, and she knew it. She would probably say the wrong thing anyway, and then they would be fighting again. It was better she kept her mouth shut.
Dario looked at the files scattered across the table, then back at Serapis, before his gaze finally settled on her. She stared back, trying to be calm and steady. Dario held her gaze for three seconds. He blinked first and looked back at Serapis.
"All right," Dario said, the rawness still in his voice, but he seemed resigned to whatever would happen next.
"Then I'll help you with Agrippa, but on my terms. Firstly, Rodrigo and Leo know everything as soon as possible.
Not pieces, not what you or anyone else decides they can handle—everything.
The files, the history, what you told me about our father, Agrippa, the missing tomb, all of it. "
Serapis frowned. "That may not go as smoothly as—"
"I know how it will go," Dario interrupted. "Rodrigo will want to throw you off another cliff, and Leo will try to put a bullet in you. I'm asking you to sit in the same room with them and let me handle the conversation. Which is apparently what I'm good for."
It was said without bitterness, but it was blunt.
At least his survival instincts are still intact, Frederica thought, and sipped her water. That was a good sign.
Serapis was quiet for a long moment, then something worn down and relieved crossed his face.
"Your father would have said the same thing," he said, softly. "Almost exactly."
Dario swallowed hard. "Yeah. I know. He was good like that."
Frederica became aware that she had been staring at Dario for the past several minutes without looking at anyone else in the room, and that her parents had almost certainly noticed.
Shit. That can be an argument for another day.
Serapis reached for his wine again. "Rodrigo's cooperation won't come cheap. Leo will not come at all, at first. And Altun—"
"Altun will be worse than Leo," Dario confirmed.
"And she has more than a right to be," Serapis replied, looking old and upset again.
"After she drained my power, I thought a lot about what she said that night.
Her sister and others in the Aurora abused her, and I didn't know the full extent of it.
I kept my distance even when I was their leader, and I didn't watch them as I should have.
The hurt they caused her is partially on me.
It will be up to her to decide how I will make amends for that. "
Dario nodded in agreement. "You two will work that out between yourselves.
I think Kon will help eventually because he will see Agrippa as a threat.
Athena goes where Kon goes, and once Altun sees that those two aren't burning this house down with you in it, she'll hear you out.
She's too good a tactician to let personal feelings get in the way of strategy, and she won't like the idea of Agrippa walking about in the world.
Give her everything. Make amends somehow, and she won't be able to resist the mystery of it all, not to mention the magic. "
"She never could," Serapis said with a small smile. "She was never really interested in power. She just loves magic for itself."
"As for my brothers, they will need to be convinced the enemy isn't you," Dario continued. "But after that? They won't stop until they have eliminated Agrippa. When he is dead, you might still be fucked, to be honest."
"I can live with that, and if Altun asks for my head, I'm most likely going to agree to it," Serapis said with a tired sigh. "I just need Agrippa gone first."
Despina rose to her feet and patted Serapis's arm. "Good. We are in agreement. It's late, and we are all tired. You're staying the night."
Serapis blinked in surprise. "That's kind of you—"
"I'm not being kind. It's too late to go anywhere, and you look like you haven't slept in weeks." Despina topped up his empty wine glass. "We have another guest room, and it's not a bother."
Serapis looked around the table. First, at Tore, steady and watchful. Then at Frederica, who kept her expression carefully blank, and finally at Dario, who was watching him like he still hadn't decided whether he wanted to hug him or shoot him.
"Thank you, Despina," Serapis said and meant it. "I would love to be a guest in your home."
Dario reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He turned it in his hand once, twice, looking at the screen without pressing anything.
"I'm going outside," he said to no one in particular. "I need five minutes before I call Rodrigo." He glanced at Frederica briefly. "Don't let anyone steal my wine."
He walked out of the room, and in a few seconds, she heard the back door open and shut. She smiled at Serapis, and it was all threat.
Now that we are alone, old man, it's my turn.